Zabbix 
Not-so-common use 
and 
Constant improvement
Main functionality 
Agentless 
Native agent 
Visualisation 
Alerting 
Data storage 
Web monitoring
Distributed monitoring 
Zabbix proxy
True opensource 
Open 
Core
Weather forecast
Longer period forecast
Monitoring translations
Caching induced problems
Translator statistics
Translators graphed : zalex_ua
User behaviour
Daily stock value
Change in kroner
More stocks
Speed traps
SERPRO 
● Government institution in Brazil 
● Zabbix – aggregating solution
Self-monitoring
SVN branch freeze status
What have we improved?
Looking back 
First time here in 2009, since then... 
● 1.8 2009-12 API, passive proxies 
● 2.0 2012-05 LLD, Java gateway 
● 2.2 2013-11 A thousand papercuts 
● 2.4 2014-09 Maintainability
2.2
Process status
Web monitoring: templates 
Web template 
Website 1 Website 1
Web monitoring: content extraction 
Page 1 Session ID Page 2
Logfile content extraction 
Fr Feb 07 2014 11:07:36.6690 */ Thread Id 1400 (GLEWF) large result 
buffer allocation - /Length: 437136/Entries: 5948/Client Ver: >=10/RPC 
ID: 41726453/User: AUser/Form: CFG:ServiceLevelAgreement 
log[/path/to/the/file,large result buffer allocation.*Entries: ([0-9]+),,,,1]
VMware monitoring 
MAGIC 
● Point Zabbix at VMware API 
● It discovers vSpheres 
● It discovers virtual machines 
● (and monitors them)
Various improvements 
● Web monitoring 
● Length limits increased 
● Improved filters in the frontend 
● Validation
More caching 
● Never (almost) check last value only 
– avg(5m) 
– ...and hammer the database 
● “value cache” to the rescue
2.4
Ad-hoc graphing
Flexible agent filtering 
● Discover: 
– network interfaces 
– file systems 
● by type 
● by mountpoint 
– CPUs 
– ...extend
...by the way, Zabbix agent 
● Native on many platforms 
● More than 70 different things built-in
Web monitoring 
● Custom headers 
● SSL auth
Standards, baby 
ISO 8601
My favourite 2.4 feature 
● Changing loglevel runtime 
● ...for individual processes 
● ...and also ability to dump web scenario details 
● ...and the same for VMware monitoring
Upgrade policies 
● No database changes in one major release 
● All old agents supported
SERIOUS BUG
Try it out 
Virtual appliance – latest version, OpenSUSE
Friendly community 
IRC: #zabbix on Freenode 
Forum: http://www.zabbix.com/forum 
Blog: http://blog.zabbix.com
#zabbix popularity
Comparing IRC channels 
Users in IRC channel 
300 
250 
200 
150 
100 
50 
0 
Zabbix 
Nagios
Question time 
External photos (cc-licensed) by: 
– NATS Press Office 
– J. Michel 
– Dave Wilson Cumbria 
– Veni

OSMC 2014: Interesting use cases of Zabbix improvements in latest versions | Rihards Olups